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Meet Betsy Aoki, self-appointed queen of Microsoft employee blog sites and principal program manager for Gotdotnet (when Charles and Jennifer caught up with her) and now program manager in MSN working on Windows Live.
http://blogs.msdn.com/betsya/ From her magenta hair to her magenta personality, this is one of Jenny’s favorite WM_IN technology interviews to date. You go Betsy!

Yeah. It's a shame it's taken so long, but she's been really busy revolutionizing the way Microsoft employees interact with customers. Make no mistake. If it wasn't for the pioneering work of Betsy this whole MS Blogging thing would not be where it is today.
Thanks, Betsy!

Actually I was just joking. But now that you ask, it would be interesting to know what she does at Microsoft besides being a newscaster on the .NET show. The other reason is because she's very pretty and I'm interesting to know what pretty women do at Microsoft.

I sure like listening to Betsy explain things. She employs great metaphors, and comes across as humble and thoughtful.

However, there was one exchange in this interview that concerned me.

I liked Betsy's answer to his question of why the tech industry is so male dominated. Even though she spent much of her answer strategizing for how to get more women into the field, she did come to the negative anti-social stereotype, and refuting it.

But then he comes back with weak stuff -- about Betsy not being a coder, and that most MS employees are not coders, so women don't need be afraid to join Microsoft. I like Betsy's take better -- that there is no need to be afraid of coding. His implication
seemed to be that somehow coding is scarier for women, so they might want to avoid it!

But then he comes back with weak stuff -- about Betsy not being a coder, and that most MS employees are not coders, so women don't need be afraid to join Microsoft. I like Betsy's take better -- that there is no need to be afraid of coding. His implication
seemed to be that somehow coding is scarier for women, so they might want to avoid it!

Perhaps you've misinterpreted my statements as I certainly do not think that writing code is any more scary to a female who doesn't know how to write code than a male...

My point was that you can still work at Microsoft (and in the industry) if you are not an engineer... Attracting more women to technical roles is the order of the day. The question in why are women not attracted to this industry to the degree that men are?
As far as the small software engineering talent pool, this is a problem that spans genders. Fact is, the US is producing less and less engineers each year.

Writing software is gender neutral. Can I be more clear?

Again, most job roles at MS do not require that the employee in that role spend time in an IDE designing, writing and debugging code...

Maybe you're wrong. Proponents of the functional programming methods of
Matthias Felleisen claim that women find them easier to learn. If Felleisen is right, the new features of C# should make it possible to create programming courses that women might be more enthusiastic about.

I've gone through the book A Little Java A Few Patterns by Felleisen and Daniel P. Friedman and done the exercises with C#. Its quite eye-opening.

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